Enhancing art access

Museums giving donors more chances to interact with creators, join the process

Gail Bryan is an avid collector of photography and has been active with the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. One of her pieces is Desire, by Lever Rukhin. Photo by Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune.
— Earnie Grafton / Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune

Gail Bryan is an avid collector of photography and has been active with the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. One of her pieces is Desire, by Lever Rukhin. Photo by Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune.
— Earnie Grafton / Earnie Grafton/The San Diego Union-Tribune

It doesn’t take $5,000 to be a patron of San Diego’s three primary museums.

If you are a repeat visitor, memberships are a bargain (and may be tax deducible):

Museum of Photographic Arts: $50 for individuals; $75 for dual or family; mopa.org

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego: $45 for individuals; $75 for dual or family (ages 25 and under admitted free); mcasd.org

San Diego Museum of Art: $45 for individuals; $75 for dual; sdmart.org

Information on higher levels of support, including collector levels, is available on each institution’s website.

One of the items in a fundraising auction at the Museum of Photographic Arts was a “Spectacular Wine Tasting Dinner for 8.” It promised a “very special vertical” of Château Montelena Estate Cabernet spanning five years, from 1991 through 1995. It also specified that your dinner guests would be the highly regarded photographer Phillip Scholz Rittermann and MoPA director Deborah Klochko.

People came for the wine, but as the museum discovered later, they stayed for the photography discussion.

“The feedback was great,” said board member Gail Bryan, who hosted the 2008 gathering at her home. “People absolutely loved it. So we went on to do more salons.”

Now, the museum is institutionalizing the salon concept, inaugurating a Collectors’ Salon for its top donors ($5,000 and up) and revamping its 12-year-old Photo Forum group (for $1,000-$4,999 donors).

Members of both groups will be invited to salons with exhibiting photographers, including Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor (Oct. 2), Jerry Berndt (Feb. 5) and Rineke Dijkstra (May 21). In addition to other special events, members can go on a MoPA-sponsored New York visit to the AIPAD show (Association of International Photo Art Dealers). And Collectors’ Salon members can accompany museum curators on a November trip to the world’s largest photography show, Paris Photo.

“I’ve been a trustee for a long time, and I think that anyone who is giving serious money to an institution, especially an arts institution, they are saying they want to be closer to that institution,” Bryan said. “They want to be closer to the art.”

Both the San Diego Museum of Art, with its four “Circle” membership categories ($1,500, $3,000, $5,000, and $10,000 and above), and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, with its Contemporary Collectors ($5,000-$9,999) and International Collectors ($10,000 and above), have similar opportunities for donors to expose themselves to art and artists.

“It really demonstrates that people love art, that it really has meaning to them,” Klochko said. “One of the things that art museums can offer is an entree into learning more, into meeting people who are like-minded and love and embrace art.

“That’s exciting, because I do believe that art adds value to one’s life, and it opens one’s mind; it gives you insights into new ways of thinking and opportunities to challenge yourself, as well as to find works that might be very comfortable.”

With the Museum of Photographic Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art, the term “collectors” is used loosely. How much art do you need to be a collector? Of course there’s no set number. A bigger requirement is passion for art (and the money to buy it).